“COMMON SENSE”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 138, 13 June 1931, Page 16 (Supplement)

“COMMON SENSE”

Dear Chi Ider, - To-day. I would tell you of something vov. should learn to have with your first steps, because it is something so important, that to have it, is going to make a tremendous difference to you when you grow-up. This so important attribute is what, we call just plain, common-sense. With three short anecdoes, I'll show you what I mean, and I fancy at the end of the recital you will all vote for Common Sense*. Now’ then Childer, jump into this train with me. and we are all going to travel in the same first-class car. See that lady further along. She looks mighty sick, she must be. too, for she has a nurse with her. but now we are off. Along we tear, swinging and swaying, turning and twisting round curves. Slam down go the windows, and we are in a tunnel, and this goes on for half an hour: in to one. out again and so on. and oh! how hot it is, and just choking with smoke! And look! the invalid lady has fainted, but the nurse look«s sick herself and has not noticed. A passenger goes and draws the attendant's attention. "Oh, dear! Oh dear!” we hear her say, "the brandy! What did I do with the brandy?” She fumbles in her handbag for some keys and begins to try and get down a strapped suiteast) from the luggage rack. Quietly rises another passenger, steps behind the hick lady, and from a coat pocket, slips out a small bottle and moistens the invalid’s lips; gradually gets the dose administered, and from another pocket comes a smelling salts bottle, and the patient is reIt transpires also that the cork has been rammed in ho tightly that it takes a corkscrew to extract it, and after that the brandy, unless given full strength, cannot be administered until water has been procured from somewhere, perhaps the next stop. See the difference, Childer, of what common sense on the part of the passenger, with the little bottle of this reviving dose already mixed handy in the right hand coat pocket meant in an emergency? Brandy is an emergency medicine usually, and a chemist once told me they had no medicine on their shelves that could replace brandy an a restorative. That nurse had matriculated, and may have been excellent with the conveniences of a hospital at hand, but. on this train, *we are about to leave, she had not the travelling common sense of the passenger, who saved the situation, and, perhaps a life. I know a lady who waa Principal of a Seminary, with a large boarding establishment attached. Here, it seems, the young ladies were •continually subjected to surprise fire alarms for drill purposes. They might be in the middle of a meal, or a bath, or comfy in bed. Early one evening, while they were all still downstairs, there was a genuine conflagration in the kitchan. First the brigade were summoned and the school alarm given. A matron and a fireman were coming downstairs, after doing the round of the cubicles, just on the chance of anyone being there, when, mounting two at a time, came a senior student. Challenged, she stuttered in her uncontrolled excitement:— ”May-ma£-may-trou-it’s fire drill. and f have not go on my dressing gown ami bath slippers.” Then, she seemed to “take in” the shining helmet, of the fireman, and with one shriek of “It’s a prop-prop-proper fire.” she